Hello – regarding other samples from Babylon, I am about 75% sure that Asian Dub Foundation had one also on their LP ‘Facts and Fictions’, of the robber shouting ‘it’s survival!’. I can’t remember which track that was right now.

These tunes are ok — but do they really add anything new to the genre? It’s difficult to see the point of them — they sound identical to tunes I heard many years ago.

These genres seem to be reverting, going backwards to a deep conservatism rather than fulfilling their original ‘mission’, which was surely the opposite intention.

To me, the whole genre and related genres are becoming like the absolute conservative bastion of heavy metal — Attitude wise, it’s all very Iron Maiden instead of Jimi Hendrix, or it’s The Exploited instead of the early punk bands’ attitudes.

Nag, you sound just like an old nag mate — Let me tell from a yout perspektive, that Dubstep, Grime etc, have taken that big people’s dub to another plane.

What do you want then Nag, old skool orthodoxy? No offence, but you show your age — For a start, Dizzee Raskal man dem keeping it real with his reality lyrics and all. That’s, like, reality radio for the youth dem, man, all ova Pekham and Hackney Post Code way, and when man dem buss shot like rice, man dem don’t step in anotha man post code, ya hear me, and man like Dizee speak trut in da lyrics.

So, is taking the forms to another place. That’s probably a place that you don’t understand, so you diss what you don’t know, which is always the way; part of evolution innit?

Now rewind the Dizee tune man cos bwoy, that’s rough. Nuff man out there got Dizee’s name in their lyrical swing an ting when they chat to respec tha ghetto.

well, I am not going to argue with you since at my age that would be pointless, but I should just say that I’d take the 1960’s output of the Silver Apples any day of the week rather than the questionable records of dear Dizee, since arguing over post codes — whether said post codes be in Peckham or in the Valley of the Kings — has never really been a top priority for me.

I checked those Wadada tunes, and admittedly, they aren’t bad , but I just want to wilfully play both sides of the argument here ( well isn’t that better than just mindlessly writing “chunnne’ or “heavy bassssss” here? ).

The problem is, that these dub step tunes and related genres ( and to a lesser degree, so many ‘new UK digi dubs’ of the previous ten years ) just inevitably end up using samples of ‘real Rasta’ voices in a talismanic sense, to add ‘authenticity’ and ‘genuine depth’ to their tunes — But in so many ( esp dubstep and new euro dub ) cases,if you remove and take away the samples from the records — then I wonder what you have left? Some cold synth sweeps that bring to mind London ( or any other European inner city ) in the winter? Some sirens which are again, talismanic, in that they are taken wholesale from another cultures’ inventiveness? A heavy bass ( which anyone with a computer can create) ? A drum machine heavily echoed?

Again, anyone messing around on a computer can do most of that.

It all becomes like picking over the bones and left overs of another cultures’ inventiveness — but wanting to take all the kudos and accolades that the original artists truly deserve.

Yeah, a lot of the newer artists’ records do sound alright, and yes, the bass lines are evocative,and I can’t help but like a lot of it — but I don’t know — there’s just too much which sounds like stealing other people’s fire and creativity to me.

Even the name, Wadada, is borrowed from Rasta, and even the reified central motif — B-R-I-X-T-O-N — is largely another culture’s creative domain, again, fetishised by the artist, the so called Wadada.

Dub step and related genres are by no means as Promethean as they pretend to be.

As I said, I just want to wilfully play both sides of the argument here — but none of these records sound anywhere near as inventive as the original Jamaican artists and European electronic ‘out there’ artists sounded between say, 1965 — 1985.